This invention relates to theater lighting in general and more particularly to a lighting console which provides increased capability of control, increased reliability, increased serviceability, and increased economy of interfacing manual and memory capabilities, particularly in portable use.
In the area of traditional performance lighting, separate manual consoles and memory consoles have been developed. For a background in the manual multi-scene console, reference can be made to U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,273. Descriptions of computer-based memory systems are well established in the patent art.
While each type has proved useful in certain applications, neither has been found completely satisfactory for the many applications in which both the adaptability provided by manual capability and some form of preset storage are both required. As a result, these applications have required the use of either both a manual console and a separate memory console and a separate memory console, at considerable expense and inconvenience to the operator, or of a new class of hybrid manual/memory console providing both multi-scene manual capability and increasingly elaborate memory and effects subsystems. Such consoles, which are based on traditional manual console design, have problems:
The number of channels to be ccntrolled in the manual scenes is so large that extensive mastering capabilities are required with a consequently large number of possible master assignments for each channel's potentiometers. No satisfactory control for making that assignment which satisfies all of the necessary electronic and human factors criteria is currently known in the art.
These manual sections must be interfaced increasingly with electronic storage systems which require and produce serial data systems which require and produce serial data streams. To date, parallel/serial conversion subsystems have been installed, requiring considerable additional interconnecting wiring.
The electronic complexity of such consoles; the amount of interconnecting wiring; and the degree to which various functions for a single channel are distributed in many different locations within the console have made such consoles less than fully reliable and very difficult to troubleshoot.
Furthermore, in addition to the need for a console which is reliable, particularly when transported with a touring production, there is a need for flexibility in console design. The ideal console should be as large or small as needed for the application without requiring a major electronic redesign and should give operational flexibility.
It is the object of the present invention to produce a console meeting all these needs.